Love of the Land: Far From Home

Far From Home

On the eve of the Iraqi elections, the daughter of Iraqi Jews mourns the destruction of Baghdad’s once-vibrant Jewish community


Marina Benjamin
Tabletmag.com
02 March '10

As Iraq’s March 7 election draws near, I can’t help reflecting on how far the Iraqi nation, now entrenched in factionalism, has departed from the commitment to multiculturalism so vital to its birth. “There is no meaning in the words Jews, Muslims, and Christians in the terminology of patriotism, there is simply a country called Iraq and all are Iraqis,” King Faisal proclaimed in 1921, soon after the British installed him as king. These were fine words, underscored by a constitution that granted all of Iraq’s indigenous minorities equal rights. But Faisal’s valiant experiment in diversity proved short-lived, as I know all too well—my own family was forced into exile in 1951, after the government decided to eject Iraqi Jews en masse from the country.

Actually, it would be more accurate to say my family exploded into exile, atomizing in the process. Some members landed in Israel, some in Iran, and some in North America; my immediate kin escaped first to India and then eventually to the United Kingdom. The dynamite involved was—as is ever the story with Jews—racial hatred, which played itself out in the Iraqi political arena as an inability to resolve escalating tensions between Arab Nationalism and Zionism.

My family was far from alone in being shattered. Iraq’s entire Jewish population—a community with roots in Mesopotamia that pre-date the birth of Islam by a millennium—was unceremoniously ejected from the country between 1950 and 1951. But first the Iraqi government had “denaturalized” the Jews, effectively making them refugees in their own land and rendering them defenseless against marauding gangs eager to harm Jews in a kind of skewed quid pro quo for the displacement of Palestinian Arabs.

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Love of the Land: Far From Home

Love of the Land: Israel's 'crime' : failing to use Jewish refugees

Israel's 'crime' : failing to use Jewish refugees

Bataween
Point of No Return
04 March '10

Israel committed the mistake, nay, the crime, of failing to use the Jewish refugees from Arab countries in putting its case.

Addressing a London audience yesterday at the launch of the English edition of book The Dove Flyer, Eli Amir, the distinguished Baghdad-born writer, did not mince his words. " Why did Israel not use us 850,000 Jewish refugees from Arab countries? There were more of us and we lost more than the 650,000 Palestinian refugees."

Amir commended the passing of the Knesset law last week safeguarding the rights of Jewish refugees but implied it might have come too late. " The Palestinians have won," he said.

Amir urged people to read his novel The Dove Flyer (Mafriah hayonim). When the last Jew disappeared from Iraq, and its Jewish history had been erased, Amir's account of the anti-Jewish atmosphere in Iraq between 1948 and 1951, when 90 percent of the Jewish population was airlifted out to Israel would be the only enduring testament to the presence and persecution of Jews in Iraq." Iraq was the only country to hang Jews because they were Zionsts", he exclaimed. (He might have added that Iraq was the only country to hang Jews in 1969 because they were Jews.)

Amir missed places in Iraq, but he did not miss being 'under the yoke of the Muslims'. He relished Israel as a free and independent state. "We must do everything in our power to maintain it," he said. He himself was a living example that any citizen of Israel, regardless of origin, could 'make it' if he worked hard enough.

Review of The Dove Flyer

Love of the Land: Israel's 'crime' : failing to use Jewish refugees

Love of the Land: Muslim-Jews lost in the no-man's-land of identity

Muslim-Jews lost in the no-man's-land of identity

Bataween
Point of No Return
21 January '10

Posted before Shabbat

A new comedy film called The Infidel is creating a sensation in the British press: it is about a British Muslim who, in a matter of minutes, discovers he was adopted and that he was born Jewish. Why is the film considered so controversial, even outrageous? In the West, Jews and Muslims are seen as polar opposites, eternal adversaries. To put them both together in the same script seems guaranteed to offend members of both religions.

In fact a Muslim who discovers he's a Jew is not as outlandish as it sounds. There is the case of the Jew from Kuwait. The Jewish girl brought up by her Muslim neighbours after her family abandoned her in their chaotic exodus from Egypt. The Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi's Jewish grandmother makes him a Halachic Jew. Mixed families are known to live in Kurdistan, Egypt and Lebanon. Thousands of Muslim Yemenis are dimly aware of their Jewish roots. One Jewish convert was even President of North Yemen.

Traditionally, the two communities kept apart in the Middle East, and intermarriage has always been rare. But the mass flight Jews from Arab countries has left behind a number of Muslim-Jews in the no-man's land of identity.

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Love of the Land: Muslim-Jews lost in the no-man's-land of identity

Love of the Land: Save Ezekiel's tomb before it's too late

Save Ezekiel's tomb before it's too late

Bataween
Point of No Return
15 January '10

Posted before Shabbat

The shocking news that the Iraqi authorities have or are planning to erase the Jewish character of the ancient shrine of Ezekiel at al-Kifl, Iraq, first broken on Point of No Return, has reached the ears of Jerusalem Post. Ksenia Svetlova spoke to Professor Shmuel Moreh, who says that millenarian Hebrew inscriptions are now hidden by plaster:

For centuries Jews, Christians and Muslims came to Al-Kifl, a small town south of Baghdad, to visit the tomb of the Prophet Ezekiel and pray.

The distinctive Jewish character of the Al-Kifl shrine, namely the Hebrew inscriptions and the Torah Ark, never bothered the gentile worshipers. In the 14th century a minaret was built next to the shrine, but the interior design remained Jewish. The vast majority of Iraq's Jewish community left some 60 years ago, but Shi'ites took good care of the holy site.

Until now.

Recently "Ur," a local Iraqi news agency, reported that a huge mosque will be built on top of the grave by Iraq's Antiquities and Heritage Authority, while Hebrew inscriptions and ornaments are being removed from the site, all as part of renovations.

Prof. Shmuel Moreh of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, winner of the 1999 Israel Prize in Middle Eastern studies and chairman of the Association of Jewish Academics from Iraq, speaking to The Jerusalem Post on Wednesday, confirmed the report.

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Love of the Land: Save Ezekiel's tomb before it's too late

Love of the Land: 'Palestinians drove Iraqi Jews to Israel' - author

'Palestinians drove Iraqi Jews to Israel' - author

Bataween
Point of No Return
29 December 09

At last, an Iraqi tells it like it was: the Palestinian Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, who incited the 1941 Farhoud attacks, was guilty of the political stupidity of driving the Jews of Iraq into Israel. The following are excerpts from an interview with Iraqi author Dr. Rashid Al-Khayoun, which aired on Al-Arabiya TV on December 4, 2009. (With thanks: Sacha, Lily)

Here is the MEMRI clip.

Dr. Rashid Al-Khayoun: When you meet an Iraqi Jew today on the streets of Europe or elsewhere, he remembers his co-existence with his Muslim or Christian neighbor.

Interviewer: When did the Iraqi Jews begin to lose that sense of security and tolerance?

Dr. Rashid Al-Khayoun: When pan-Arab nationalism grew stronger in Iraq, from the late 1940's to the early 1950's. The Jew began to be the target of deliberate affronts. Iraqi Jews are known for their patriotism. They have nothing to do with Israel. The issue of Israel and Zionism...

Interviewer: But many of the Jews moved to Israel.

Dr. Rashid Al-Khayoun: They were coerced to move.

Interviewer: Who forced them?

Dr. Rashid Al-Khayoun: The wave of pan-Arab nationalism within Iraq.

Interviewer: So they thought that Israel would be better for them than Iraq?

(Read full interview)

Love of the Land: 'Palestinians drove Iraqi Jews to Israel' - author